Underrated and overrated films (and other general filmy chat)

Jack Black is definitely a weird actor - feels like in the movies where I want to like him I don’t and vice versa.

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I watched Bernie a while back, and Jack Black did a pretty good job playing a… Fairly weird role. It wasn’t until I finished the movie that I realized it was based on a true story. See also: Pain & Gain.

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this happened to me when my date (who was a weird and twisted and hilarious woman) and I went to see Happiness (the Todd Slondz one.) There was no noise from anyone, then when the shrink character opens fire on all the happy people in the park, she and I erupted into laughter. At first we were the only ones, then after a minute, it made it OK for everyone else to laugh. But the fact that we enabled that was funny and weird in and of itself.

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definitely not overrated, somewhere between correctly rated too underrated depending on who you are talking to.

Love that movie.

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I had a very strange film going experience in college. My roommate and I went to see some kind of thriller movie. During the first mildly creepy scene, a girl screamed a blood curdling scream. During the second, a few more girls. By the end of the movie, every scary scene was cause for every female member of the audience (except us, who were baffled by the whole thing) to scream their heads off. I always thought it could be a psych major doing an experiment.

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By the way, I created another thread on Neflix recommendations:

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Berny: Loved it. He didn’t seem to push the role into a place where it didn’t belong by creating some wackadoodle, and he didn’t underplay it and keep the character hidden from view–I thought it was a beautiful piece of work both for Black’s work but also for the other characters as well. That film worked for me on a number of levels.

As for Fear and Loathing:

Hell yeah. Even better knowing that Depp was a fan and friend of Thompson’s.

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But have you seen Where the Buffalo Roam?

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Interesting–I watched it many moons ago as a child prior to knowing who the hell Bill Murray was depicting and why he was acting that way so the work was lost on me. IIRC, I knew who BM was at that time because my dad let me watch Caddyshack ('DOOODIEEEE!!!", ahh, so great) and Stripes, both of which have been lifelong favorites. In the years since reading HST’s stuff it’s always been on my mind to go back and see Murray’s impression. Man, this thread is blowing up my bitorrent queue…

Edit: :frowning: RIP Ramis, your witty reparte will be missed.

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In response to my own question about infinite looping material for a slow tv install, this weekend my husband and I IMDBed George Ford, the auteur behind Fireplace for Your Home. Turns out the dude was slow tv before slow tv was a thing. Netflix selection of his oeuvre is limited, but The Amazon prime has him in HD glory.

Aquarium for The Home: Saltwater Reef is truly his masterpiece, a culmination of the themes he explored earlier in Mountain Stream: A Mountain Stream Background for Your TV but with more camera angles, adorable fish, and less sound-effects-making-you-want-to-urinate.

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While I don’t normally watch them, the Oscars were on last night (Gravity and Dallas Buyers Club rounding out the big winner list). And while I’m here I’ll throw down for DBC as being worth a visit…and isn’t it odd to get to that age where film is beginning to represent historical moments you actually recall living through?
Anywho, I thought a link to the nominees list might be apropos here, less so for the big winners than the films I wasn’t aware of and likely never would have heard about. I’m thinking specifically about the categories for Documentary: Feature, Documentary: Short Subject, Short Story: Animation, and Short Story: Live Action categories, all of which had titles I was unaware of.

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I have been meaning to watch “The Act of Killing” which was nominated (and is on netflix) it is meant to be a really good, harrowing documentary.

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Copy that. Pretty much all of the documentaries and short films on that list are also on mine. Without wanting to sound too much like a Hollywood fanboi, there were some pretty shit-hot flicks, even big-budget ones, available to choose from this year.

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Part 73 of watching films I should have seen years ago.

Seven Samurai

It’s good, but is it really 3 1/2 hours good? I’m not sure. And is it any better than the much tauter Magnificent Seven?

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If you’re against remakes and The Departed (which is much tauter than the Infernal Affairs trilogy), what did The Magnificent Seven really add? Other than white cowboys—one of whom is, for some inexplicable reason, as bald as a billiard ball—saving Mexican peasants?

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is that a serious question?

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Heh, hoisted by my own petard.

Calvera? A decent antagonist (at the cost of any development of the farmers’ characters).

Perhaps I’m just against multiple versions of the same story, and I like whichever I saw first, regardless of which was first :slight_smile:

Nah, I liked Seven Samurai a lot. It just seemed very long.

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I never ask serious questions. :slight_smile:

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You’ve never seen Lang’s Mabuse, the Gambler, or the director’s cut of Until the End of the World, have you…

That other movies are longer doesn’t mean that Seven Samurai isn’t long.

I mean, by your logic I could wonder whether you’ve seen Stantango or Shoah, as though that would somehow prove that your examples really aren’t long at all.

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